Yet another month has come to pass and this time with a slight sigh of relief. September was somewhat of a yo-yo month with some great 'ups' and some disappointing 'downs'. If anything though, it started and ended with a bang, all thanks to our lovely flatmates Scott and Adrienn!

On the first (Sun)day of the month, Scott and his lovely Hungarian girlfriend Adrienn joined us on a road-trip to Litchfield National Park. There is a lot to be said about this beautiful little outing, so for now I will leave you to marvel at this group picture of us until I have the time to dedicate a separate blog post to this wonderful day:

Scott, Adrienn and us

Ben and I caught some kind of stomach bug, which entirely messed up the following weekend. We are still not entirely sure where it came from, but I have an inkling that it was passed on to me by one of my little rascals at school. Sharing is caring, right? There is nothing more annoying than spending your sick days actually being sick though, even more so when it takes you a while to recover!

Then, a week later, we got into a rather nasty dispute with our house-mate Kate, which messed up another one of our weekends. We have experienced some "trouble" with her over the past and this dispute was bound to happen at some point. I won't go into details, but some really horrible things were thrown at us, before she finally admitted that she had been behaving in such a nasty way to make herself feel better and because she knew it would hurt us. An apology followed, but it is needless to say that the atmosphere in the flat changed. Or at least for us.

Possibly due to that and the usual germs thrown at me by my little angels at school, I fell ill again two weeks later! My glands were the size of bloody ping-pong balls and I had to battle a very high fever, accompanied by throbbing head aches. These kept me home for almost a week... again. I truly hope this won't turn into some sort of recurring pattern and the sick-days will stay at bay!

In between all that unpleasantness, we really tried to make the most of what Darwin had on offer for us that month. It kept us busy and away from the apartment, which is something we both needed. First up, was another free movie at the Waterfront, this time featuring the sequel to 'Happy Feet'. Neither of us enjoyed the first movie, but surprisingly, this one wasn't all that bad. Then again, all free movies are pretty damn awesome

"Happy Feet 2" at the Waterfront

Adrienn celebrated her birthday on the 18th of September. We weren't quite sure what to get her, so we bought her some chocolate cupcakes. We had to be creative in hiding them, in the first place to keep them undetected from her until the right day and in second place to keep them from melting into a sticky mess. And so we hid them in the spare fridge in the laundry room, with her birthday card to ensure she knew it was for her, with another note hung up on her door to lead her to her treat. It was well worth the fuss as she was happily surprised

It just so happened that I was not called into work that day, so I was able to accompany her to Casuarina shopping centre and get some of the things she had been wishing to get for the kitchen; she is an avid baker. In the evening, joined by Ben and Scott, we all went out for a celebratory dinner at a Sushi restaurant and then ended the evening at Cold Rock. I have no idea how it remained unknown to me until now, but in hindsight that was maybe a good thing. Cold Rock is an ice-cream parlour that not only offers a wide range of flavours, but also allows you to add mix-ins:

Cold Rock

And yes, you can have anything mixed in with your ice-cream, from chocolate bars, to fruit and nuts, sweets, and other weird accompaniments. They lay the scooped ice-cream on an ice-cold metal chopping board, add your chosen mixtures and then bash away at it with some metal scoop thingie until it creates a personalised 'Cold Rock'. Scott is the master of strange combinations and had peanut butter and milo ice-cream mixed with mango, some chocolates, and some sweets. We are by no means as adventurous as him, but it was definitely a fun experience! Best birthday celebration ever! :D

During one of our last weekends, we attended a free concert at the Darwin Railway Sports and Social Club (quite a mouthful). The Club was hosting a free event introducing Darwin's three newest and hottest acts to the music scene. With its location a handy 10 minute walk from our flat, it was silly to miss out, so we went along. For some stupid reason it took us an hour to actually find the place, but we were happy we did not give up. Unfortunately, we did end up missing the first band, but the remaining two were really good! We are really getting a taste for all those free events!

Three Sheets to the Wind

We also went to see a special screening of an unreleased movie about the Dalai Lama entitled "Road to Peace". The movie followed the Dalai Lama's throughout his visit to the UK in 2008: behind the scenes, during his interviews and talks, whilst interacting with the people he met along his way, and showing an unusual insight into the man. It was a lovely viewing, in an old little theatre in the centre of town and we very much enjoyed it. If you are interested, you can watch the trailer for it here: Road to Peace Trailer

Road to Peace

And then, on our last day of the month, we were woken up with a jolt by the sound of... rain! The last time we experienced rain was when we had our week's stop-over in Brisbane, around the end of May, so imagine our surprise! It was 7.30 in the morning, on a Sunday, but we were too excited to let it go by, so we sat on our balcony watching the rain pour down from the skies like never before. It was a reminder of what was awaiting us in a few week's time and even though it ruined our plans of having a day at the markets, we loved it. Never did we see rain come down so steadily for three hours upon end: the streets were temporarily flooded, the swimming pool was overflowing and the water was seeping into our balcony. It was a surreal experience for us!

The rest of the day was spent at home, rather ordinarily, until we got some shocking news that the office of our South African mother-charity STAESA (mother-charity to our non-profit organisation Akwaaba Africa: www.akwaabaafrica.org) got broken into. Every piece of equipment was stolen, every computer, every printer, scanner, telephone, even most of the furniture! It was heart breaking news, especially as without any computers, STAESA could not do its work and they were worried sick about the volunteers that were relying on e-mail communication to get in touch with them across the world. Luckily, Simon, our dear friend, had a laptop he could work on from home, but other than that the situation was miserable. The bank refused to give them a loan and we could not stand by without helping. And so we decided to donate half of our savings to STAESA so that they could buy themselves some second hand computers to continue their beautiful work. It was a no-brainer; and there is no way we would have spent that money on anything as important and meaningful anyway, but it does mean we have to make do with a lot less in the months to come. It seemed as though this was yet another disappointing weekend, until Scott and Adrienn out of the blue saved the day. They invited us to join them for dinner, together with Kate. On the menu: a finger-licking delicious home-cooked Sunday roast! And what's more, we all went back to Cold Rock for dessert afterwards. What a lovely end to a slightly crazy month!

Scott's master piece: Roast Dinner

Best flatmates in the world!

So yes, some disappointments, some heart aches, but also some great memories were made this month. Luckily for us - and hopefully for you too, as you will be having to read about it - October has some amazingness in store for us which we have been looking forward to for a really long time! Stay tuned! Much love and take care xxx